


Being Sherlock Holmes

by Remki



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Crack, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-19
Updated: 2011-01-19
Packaged: 2017-10-14 21:23:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/153594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Remki/pseuds/Remki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The prompt was that, unlike the rest of the flat, Sherlock keeps his room at beyond-OCD cleanliness and order. And John finds out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Being Sherlock Holmes

There was just no accounting for some things.

Sherlock had been away for nearly two weeks, hard at work on a case in France (on personal invite of the French government, no less), and John had been left behind to watch the flat and alert Sherlock if anything interesting cropped up in London. It wasn't that John hadn't wanted to go (he had), but Sherlock had insisted he would be more invaluable to the detective in London than in some run down Paris hotel. John had lived with Sherlock long enough to know that this usually meant that the man was spending hours, if not days, immersed in some disguise to sniff out his leads, and that John would have been a hindrance in these endeavors. But Sherlock, as much as the word seemed to jar with his projected personality, had enough kindness in him not to say so to the good doctor outright.

So he was left alone in London, bored, with a dirty flat, and nothing better to do than tidy up.

It had started in the kitchen first. John hadn't intended to make it a project, but he had found himself determined to -if not get rid of- than at least sequester some of Sherlock's more viable experiments away from their daily foodstuff. And of course, there was no real distinction for Sherlock in terms of space and it's uses: what started in the kitchen flowed out from it as easily as water, and in this manner John found himself cleaning the living room next, and then the hall, the bathroom, his own room and then...

John stood before the door, determination on his face and a broom in his hand. Sherlock be damned! He would learn the cost of leaving John behind, and it would cost him the death of a year's worth of dust mites, an entire population of spiders, and newly cleaned socks. If it made Sherlock think twice about leaving John to his own devices, so be it.

John had never been in Sherlock's room before. He had assumed that, if the rest of the flat was any testament -and this being the public area, in which John actually tried to maintain a semblance of order- than the doctor had better fear the worse. With this in mind, John took a deep breath, turned the handle, and prepared to plunge in.

Only, when the door had swung wide, there was nothing to plunge into.

Instead, what John saw before him was almost like an entirely different planet. The curtains of the window had been left opened, and the blazing afternoon sunlight streamed into the room unhindered by a single mote of dust. The floor was a spotless expanse of cream-colored carpeting. The bed was crisply made, with sheet corners that would have made Johns army superiors wet themselves with joy. Everything seemed to be in it's place, and that place was clearly defined, easily accessible, and as clean and shiny as a newly minted coin.

Some years before, in the days before his army service and medical training, when 'hanging out' was an actual hobby and there was actual TIME to watch movies, John had seen one called "Being John Malkovich". It had been strange, and funny, and ultimately confusing, but the premise -the idea that someone could physically access the mind and being of a person through a physical doorway- had been interesting. Thinking on it now, John wondered if Sherlock's room was a reflection of his mind. If he could open a door and walk in to the great detectives brain, would it look like this?

With the creeping feeling of being watched somehow by Sherlock, John shut the door slowly. He decided then and there to forget he had ever seen Sherlock's room. He felt he would be happier that way.

\-------------

Sherlock had returned, and had only been in the flat for five minutes when he walked briskly up to John in the kitchen.

"You opened the door to my room," he stated. John stared at him.

"How--"

"There are motes of dust floating in the air. They weren't there before. Someone had to have let them in," Sherlock said before John could ask. He stared pointedly at the doctor. John, in turn, stared in something bordering between amusement and absolute horror.

"I didn't go in, if that's what you're worried about," he finally said. Sherlock snorted.

"Of course you didn't," the detective said with a wave of dismissal. "The carpet weft isn't disturbed."


End file.
